random drivel from nic and graham downunder

Well I thought it was about time I started to make proper use of the garage – AKA ‘Man Cave’. It’s a nice big garage in which I park my motorbike, keep the diving gear and the lawn mower. Oh and Nic’s for a fridge or 3 for curing meat and cheese. But apart from that – lots of space to do….. ‘stuff’.

So me and a couple of good friends who are also keen motorcyclists decided it would be a good idea to buy a ‘project bike’ between us with a view to doing it up, possibly altering it aesthetically and making it mechanically sound again. Luckily on of us (Bill) is very mechanically minded – having grown up on an farm here in Australia he was on motorbikes from soon after learning to walk and has taken them to bits an rebuilt them many times. A good guy to have on the team!

Bill steered us towards something simple for our first project – in fact about as simple as you can get in terms of motorbikes – a single cylinder, two stroke, air cooled bike. So let me introduce the 1978 Yamaha DT175 which we bought for $350 (about 250 of your English pounds)…

Yamaha DT175

Beautiful don’t you think?

As I said the main plan is to get it back to pristine condition with important things working again – you know, like brakes and things. Some suspension that works would be welcome too.

Yesterday Bill came round and we started to strip the bike down – little did we (well, I) know that we would demolish the whole thing in a few hours! Here’s the bike now…

All that's left!

So lots more to do – obviously – but hopefully we will keep momentum up and will also keep the website updated with progress!!